As is well known and understood, an increasing need exists for sex-education programs in the schools. However, tax monies to finance these programs are hard to come by. The problem will be seen to be compounded in the junior high schools and high schools where the students begin more-and-more to experiment with sex.
As is also well known and understood, perhaps the greatest medical danger to society today concerns the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) disease. Extensive research on an international scale has been implemented in an attempt to combat the spread of the disease, and in an attempt to find its cause and to develop a cure. Private foundations--many sponsored by celebrities in the Entertainment and Sports worlds--have been formed to join in the research and to disseminate information as to those practices which minimize the possibility of being affected by the disease. Proponents of such AIDS research identify themselves, typically, through the wearing of "red ribbons" about their visible clothing.
As is also well known and appreciated, a relatively new industry that has sprung up in the United States concerns the collecting of trading cards; whereas originally associated primarily with athletics--in which cards were packaged with a stick of bubble gum and sold to youngsters--now an industry has developed where more and more diversified collections of sports and non-sports cards are about--usually sold without any bubble gum--and purchased, held and traded as investment opportunities. Such collecting of trading cards will be appreciated to be a "challenging" pastime, as one tries to determine what cards, and what sets, will appreciate the most over time.
Realizing that the use of public funds to promote awareness of AIDS and other sexually-transmitted diseases is waning because of a decrease in the monies available for such purposes, and realizing the great interest that youngsters have in acquiring collections of trading cards of their Sports idols, it is an object of the present invention to somehow merge together these concepts so as to provide some manner of disseminating information concerning AIDS and other sexually-transmitted diseases to young people of school ages, with less emphasis on the need for public spending, and in a way which would gain the acceptance of the youngsters in obtaining such information.
Because of the prevalence of teenage sexual experimentation, it is also an object of the invention to further merge the dissemination of such information with a means to carry it through in actual, real-world use and experience.
It is a further object of the invention to implement such an awareness program utilizing these techniques, and taking advantage when sums of money are available for education through private foundations set up for these purposes.